Activism Across America

Over the last two days, I’ve been frustrated as I’ve been trying to help local groups get some attention for their demonstrations commemorating the suffering that’s come with five years of war and military occupation in Iraq. In Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the Brandywine Peace Community is incoherently mixing a message about the crucifixion of Jesus with a protest against war profiteering by Lockheed Martin. In Seattle, Washington, the local chapter of World Can’t Wait is promising to shut media centers down, and then complaining about censorship of dissenting views.

Today, I’m happy to report having found a more productive, coherent, and inclusive antiwar protest. In southern New Jersey, there is a true coalition of antiwar groups holding a protest on ideological common ground, with no extra baggage brought along for the ride.

The following groups are joining to sponsor the peace demonstration: South Jersey Movement for Justice and Peace, South Jersey Progressive Democrats of America, Greater Camden Unity Coalition, South Jersey Healthcare Coalition, Delaware Valley Veterans for Peace, the Camden County Green Party, and the South Jersey Peace and Justice Coalition.

Their protest will begin at 4:00 this afternoon, at the Walter Rand Transportation Center at Broadway Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Camden.

Groan. I really want to be writing positive stories about the antiwar protests that are taking place across America. In fact, I am searching for information about these protests, trying to get information about the demonstrations from the activist organizations themselves. Unfortunately, I keep coming across protests that don’t make sense.

Yesterday, I wrote, disappointed, about the Brandywine Peace Community’s wacky mix of an antiwar protest with a commemoration of the crucifixion of Jesus. Today, I looked into antiwar protests to take place in Seattle tomorrow, only to find that the protesters there are wandering off topic too.

The Seattle protests of five years of war in Iraq have morphed into a strangely unreflective attack on the mainstream media coverage of the war. Here’s the notice the Seattle chapter of the group World Can’t Wait posted over at United for Peace and Justice:

Non-Violent Mass Resistance to Shut Down the Media Centers who continue to be complicit with the Bush Regime!
No Business As Usual! Wear Orange! Bring Orange Signs of your favorite blacked-out stories and issues the media refuses to report! The media has played a major role in making the opposition to the Bush regime invisible! It’s time they were held accountable to the people! WHERE’S OUR FREE PRESS? The mainstream media has become another extension of the Bush Program by trying to block out dissent and critical thinking. Bring the media the stories that are vital to this democracy, vital to bringing the truth to light about the criminal activities of the Bush Regime! Ask the media why it does not report the truth and no longer informs the people! NO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL!

Look - it’s quite clear that the one thing that the World Can’t Wait’s protests in Seattle will not do tomorrow is shut down any media centers. Why pretend that it’s going to happen?

For that matter, if World Can’t Wait wants to protect the free press, and if they are tired of seeing dissent blocked out, then why are they trying to shut down media centers? Goodness me, can’t the people at Seattle’s World Can’t Wait see that they are engaged in the very kind of agenda that they complain they’re the target of?

The way that a free press works is that it publishes the information it wants to publish, not the information that activist organizations tell it to publish. World Can’t Wait can’t go around trying to tell the free press what kind of message it has to publish. To do so is absolutely contrary to promise of a free press. World Can’t Wait has declared that it wants to shut media centers down - to block their messages because these unspecified media centers dissent from the World Can’t Wait agenda.

Is there some kind of nutritional deficiency in Seattle that leaves people there unable to perceive irony?

Freedom of the press, Seattle activists, doesn’t guarantee that citizen groups will get favorable coverage of their activity. It’s your job as a citizen group to try to convince media organizations to provide you with favorable coverage. You have no constitutional right to get attention in the news. The people, and yes, even the corporations, who broadcast news media have the constitutional right to cover the stories that they want to cover, and to not cover the stories that they don’t want to cover.

Like Seattle World Can’t Wait, I don’t like the military occupation of Iraq, and I don’t approve of the coverage provided on the issue by the mainstream corporate media. However, I regard it as my mission to create media to get out the information that I believe has been neglected by corporate information stories. I don’t aim to shut down other sources of information. Instead, I try to build up my own little media outlets, like this blog.

There are a large number of local and national progressive alternative, non-corporate information outlets. If an activist group wants media attention for its protests, it ought to get in touch with those information sources, and help those sources provide positive coverage. It’s the responsibility of activist groups to do so. I don’t see that kind of activist outreach taking place, however.

Shutting down corporate media, even if groups like Seattle World Can’t Wait could accomplish such a task, wouldn’t accomplish anything, if there weren’t a strong, activist-supported alternative media ready to fill in the gap. Alternative media of all sorts is just waiting to be used by activists. I invite serious, clear minded activists to get in touch with me to provide coverage for their events, but I find that activist groups usually don’t even try to get the attention of alternative media.

Critical thinking requires clear thinking: How can protesters bring their favorite blacked out stories, if the stories have truly been blacked out?

Here’s one more tip for groups like the Brandywine Peace Community and Seattle World Can’t Wait: Stay on topic.

If you want to have a protest against the occupation of Iraq, don’t make your protest about the crucifixion of Jesus. The two issues are not related. If you want to have a protest against the occupation of Iraq, don’t make it a goal of your protest to shut down local media. The two issues are not the same. Wander off topic, and you can’t blame anybody else when you don’t get attention for your original issue.

I really don’t want to be writing articles like this right now, but it is clear to me that many progressive activist groups need to get a loud wake up call, to clear the fog of distraction from their heads, and to get back to what matters.

This Friday, at noon, at the convergence of Mall & Goddard Boulevards in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, locals will gather to protest against the work of Lockheed Martin. The Brandywine Peace Community calls Lockheed Martin the largest war profiteer in the United States.

So far, the protest sounds good. It’s at this point, however, that the Brandywine Peace Community does some really clumsy mixing of religion and antiwar activism. They declare their demonstration “War’s 5th Anniversary Trail of Mourning & Truth” and say that it will be modeled on the Catholic stations of the cross Easter walk, which in many parts of the world still involved ritual self-mutilation.

The posting at United for Peace and Justice explains, “The Good Friday Demonstration, modeled on the traditional Stations of the Cross, will include readings paralelling the U.S. policy of war and occupation, war economy and unmet human needs, with the last steps and crucified death of Jesus Christ and will also include nonviolent civil disobedience…”

Huh?!?

What on earth does the crucifixion of Jesus have to do with Lockheed Martin? Are they supposed to be responsible for the execution of Jesus?

A word of advice to the Brandywine Peace Community: There are a lot of good non-Christian peace activists around, but you lose their support when you insist on using antiwar demonstrations to push your religion at people. People ought to be able to protest for peace without having someone harangue them about Jesus.

The Iraq War is not about Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or the Book of Revelations, okay? Please, let’s stay on topic.

John McCain went to Exeter, New Hampshire, to meet with a group of supporters to try to get his struggling campaign on its feet. What he didn’t plan on was to meet a group of protesters outside that was almost as large as the assembly of his supporters.

The protesters chanted, “Bush, McCain, more of the same.”

“John McCain is wrong on issues like trade, the economy, on health care and the minimum wage, on workers’ rights,” said one protester, a union member explaining why he joined the demonstration.

Some news outlets reported 75 protesters. Others reported hundreds eventually showing up.

Along with John McCain was turncoat Joseph Lieberman, also known as the Zell Miller of the North.

Rebekah Kennedy, a civil rights lawyer from Fort Smith, Arkansas, is running as a challenger against incumbent U.S. Senator Mark Pryor. Although Senator Pryor is a Democrat, he almost always votes with Republicans on important legislation, and has earned the resentment of rank-and-file Arkansas Democrats.

The following transcript is from part of a conversation between Rebekah Kennedy and Irregular Times.

What brought you to this Green Party candidacy?

Well, that’s almost two questions, because half of that question is what brought me to the Green Party, and the other half of that question is why it’s so important now to run against Mark Pryor in particular, and to give the people of Arkansas a choice for this seat.

As far as what attracts me to the Green Party, I was born and raised Democrat in a state where most people are born and raised Democrat. There’s a popular mythology that Arkansas is a red state, but as is the case with so many things, that’s been simplified to the point of being untrue.

The dynamics of politics in Arkansas are a little bit different than they are in some other places. There may be some places in the United States where being a Democrat is still a way to make a difference for progressive values in America, but by and large Arkansas is not one of those states, particularly on a state level. The Democratic Party in Arkansas has been in control of the state government, particularly with majority control of the state legislature, for over 100 years, and has failed to bring about any progressive change for 100 years.

For those reasons, I decided to look for a political party that could be a vehicle, not merely of ambition, but of values and positive progressive public policy. That’s what led me to the Green Party.

If the Democratic Party doesn’t stand for progressive values in Arkansas, what does it stand for?

The status quo, certain narrow business interests, fear of Republicans, to some extent.

What happens to liberal Democrats in Arkansas is that they find themselves constantly voting for people who don’t share their values or their vision of public policy, for fear of politicians who would do even worse things if elected. That’s not a road toward progress.

How then, can those people have any hope for representation in Arkansas. What’s the path you see for that?

I think that the first step is that we have to have a political party that will represent us and give us a voice in the process. That’s why I’ve spent the last seven years working to build the Green Party - because I think it’s the best shot we have at building a political party that will really do what we need a political party to do. That is to say, rather than having a system for making sure that someone’s friends in Little Rock gets the state jobs they’re interested in, which is the primary function of the Democratic Party in Arkansas, we need a political party that will work to elect progressives, and advocate for progressive legislation and actively try to stop antiprogressive legislation.

The Green Party is going to be the vehicle for doing that in Arkansas, because I see that a lot of people have put a lot of time and energy into trying to fix the Democratic Party from the inside, and I won’t say that doesn’t have some value, perhaps in a more progressive state, but the degree of sweeping out you would have to do to make the Democratic Party of Arkansas a vehicle for progressive change is such that you might as well try to make the Republican Party of Arkansas a vehicle for progressive change.

In fact, there have been times when, lacking any other vehicle, the Republican Party has been the vehicle people in Arkansas have used to try to bring about progressive change. That’s why we have a large category of Rockefeller Republicans in Arkansas, which is a term that may sound odd to people in some places, but they’re sort of liberal in the sense of being forward looking and in favor of education and science. In some cases that kind of Republican has been the only alternative to the back-slapping, good old boy Democratic politics.

Philadelphia might well be renamed Pharmadelphia. That’s the reaction that comes after the news that, after the testing of the water supplies for at least 62 metropolitan areas, it’s Philadelphia’s water that comes out on top, or on the bottom, depending on how you look at it. Of all the sources of water tested, Philadelphia’s water had the most kinds of pharmaceutical contamination in it.

The researchers found traces of 63 different medications in Philadelphia’s waters. The most pharmaceutically-contaminated city water after that was New York City’s, with 16 medications found.

Philadelphia’s waters include antibiotic amoxicillin. It’s no wonder, then, that Philadelphians are suffering from more antibiotic-resistant infections.